During 2015-2016 the Moscow Exchange and IBSurgeon sponsored the authoring, in Russian, of step-by-step examples for newbie Firebird developers, with databases in 2.5 and 3.0 format. The work included full source code and parallel examples in Delphi, .Net desktop, .Net MVC, PHP (based on Laravel) and Java (Jaybird 2.x). The main work was done by Denis Simonov, who previously edited the Russian version of the Firebird 2.5 Language Reference that was translated into English and published last year.

The Firebird Project's 2017 project is to translate this work into English, edit and review it and publish it as the Firebird Developer Guide in the project's documentation library. For this project, as ever, we need funding. This is your opportunity to make it happen, by contributing whatever you can to our crowdfunding campaign.

The news below was collected from FirebirdNews site. You can periodically visit the site or subscribe to its RSS feed to keep up to date in almost real-time with all the news coming from the Firebird community.

Community News

Firebird 3 is the fastest and more secure version of Firebird up to date. Anyone using older versions of Firebird should migrate to Firebird 3 to benefit from its new features, like full SMP support, improved network protocol, improved security, encrypted wire protocol, local user management, etc. Moving to Firebird 3 will require more attention than usual, due to the inumerous changes introduced in this version, but instead of spending hours reading documentation and trying to figure things out by yourself, you can save a lot of time buying the Migration Guide to Firebird 3, available in PDF and printed formats, in English and Portuguese.

We are proud to present IBSurgeon FirstAID 5.0 - the new version of the recovery software with the highest rate of successful repairs. FirstAID 5.0 is a major improvement: now it supports Firebird 3.0, InterBase XE7, and big databases (100Gb+). Download IBSurgeon FirstAID 5.0 If you are a user of FirstAID version 3.x or 4.x, you can log into IBSurgeon Deploy Center and see that you were automatically upgraded to version 5.0. All your licenses were transferred to 5.0. -50% upgrade offer till May 15 If you have the license for FirstAID version 1.x or 2.x (including Pack 3.x), or if you have used all licenses for 3.x/4.x, we would like to offer you 50% discount to upgrade to FirstAID 5.0 Tech Support (for 50 databases) for the special price: USD$99. This is a limited offer till May 15 only! Upgrade Now!

Goal: Translate & Publish Firebird Developer Guide During 2015-2016 IBSurgeon and the Moscow Exchange sponsored the authoring, in Russian, of step-by-step examples for newbie Firebird developers, with databases in 2.5 and 3.0 format. The work included full source code and parallel examples in Delphi, .Net desktop, .Net MVC, PHP (based on Laravel) and Java (Jaybird 2.x). The main work was done by Denis Simonov, who previously edited the Russian version of the Firebird 2.5 Language Reference that was translated into English and published last year. The Firebird Project's 2017 project is to translate this work into English, edit and review it and publish it as the Firebird Developer Guide in the project's documentation library. For this project, as ever, we need funding. This is your opportunity to make it happen, by contributing whatever you can to our crowdfunding campaign. To donate, go to here and click the donate button.

Upscene Productions is proud to announce the availability of the next release of the popular multi-DBMS development tool: " Database Workbench 5.3.0 "This release includes a custom report writer, increased PostgreSQL support and a renewed stored routine debugger including full support for Firebird 3 Stored Functions and Packages. [gallery ids="10474,10475,10476"] The change logs for version 5.3.0 is available.

"There is so much new in Database Workbench 5, and the latest version includes the long awaited PostgreSQL support", says Martijn Tonies, founder of Upscene Productions. "There's a custom report writer, new code editor features, diagramming improvements, multiple editions, fully HiDPI awareness, data compare tool, more complete visual query builder and much more."

New features in version 5 include:

Support for PostgreSQL

Support for the latest versions of database engines including Firebird 3, SQL Anywhere 17, SQL Azure and MariaDB support

For more information, see What's new in Database Workbench 5? Database Workbench supports MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Firebird, Oracle, MS SQL Server, SQL Azure, SQL Anywhere, NexusDB and InterBase, comes in multiple editions and is licensed based on selectable modules. It includes tools for database design, database maintenance, testing, data transfer, data import & export, database migration, database compare and numerous other tools. About Database Workbench Database Workbench is a database developer tool, over 12 years in the making and is being used by thousands of developers across the globe who have come to rely on it every day. From database design, implementation, to testing and debugging, it will aid you in your daily database work. About Upscene Productions Based in The Netherlands, Europe, this small but dedicated company has been providing database developers with useful tools for over 14 years. Slowly expanding the product portfolio and gaining recognition amongst InterBase and Firebird database developers, they now offer tools for a whole range of database systems, including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

MySQLWorkbench allows to design database model easily and also provides an option to generate the SQL script. By default script is generated for MySQL, but, what if you need to generate a SQL script for FirebirdSQL? Here is the solution via python plugin

Hello everyone! We are pleased to announce the new update of IBProvider – v3.40. There are not a lot of changes in this release. However, it was very well tested. Including with a our new connection pool, which we will present in a month. Full news text: http://www.ibprovider.com/eng/news/n_170415.html

Finally the Firebird 3 version for Android was made available for download in the official site. Please note that since this version wasn't widely tested, you must consider it as experimental. If you find any problems, please report it to the developers mailing list.

Hi Toni, i have updated the example in the download area. Basically you have to go to File -> Project Structure and klick the green add sign in the upper left. Then choose "Import .JAR/.AAR Package" and select the aar file. After that in the group area select app and go to Dependencies. Here klick the green add sign in the upper right a choose "Module Dependencies" If that doesn't work please use the provided example.

Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 3.0.2 — the second point release in the Firebird 3.0 series. This sub-release offers many bug fixes (including fix for a recently reported security vulnerability) and also adds a few minor features and improvements, please refer to the Release Notes for the full list of changes. Binary kits for Windows and Linux on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms are immediately available for download.

dbMigration .NET 5.0 is a simple, easy and intuitive multiple database migration and data synchronization tool. With it you can easily migrate schema and data to Firebird and vice versa without complicated procedures. Please refer to the release notes for the full list of changes. http://fishcodelib.com/DBMigration.htm

Hello everyone! We follow to rule "sequence of small improvements is prefered" and glad to announce the third update of IBProvider in current year - v3.38. Main In new release we resolved the problems with notifications of asynchronous loader of data, which were detected under stress-test. Full news text: http://www.ibprovider.com/eng/news/n_170309.html Regards, IBProvider Team.

MWA Software's Firebird Pascal Client API package (fbintf) release 1.0.2 is now available for download. The package has been updated to support Delphi Win32 (from Delphi 2010 onwards) in addition to the Free Pascal Compiler (3.0.0 onwards). The package is otherwise functionally identical to release 1.0.1. The Firebird Pascal Client API package provides common Pascal language bindings to the Firebird API that are independent of the Firebird API version. Both legacy and Firebird 3 APIs are supported. The fbintf package provides the Firebird API in a format where all data types for SQL data, interface parameters and results are native Pascal types, including all parameter blocks and database information. The Pascal API is pitched at a similar level and purpose to the IBPP Firebird API provided to the C++ world. It is a required dependency for version 2 onwards of IBX for Lazarus, and is provided as both a standalone package and as part of IBX2. The Firebird Pascal API is intended to be simple to use and to place the minimum burden on the API user when it comes to managing the Firebird client library and the various Pascal objects that are created to provide the API. It is implemented as reference counted COM interfaces which, for the API user, are as easy to use as other managed types such as AnsiStrings and dynamic arrays. The user only needs to worry about accessing and using the interface; disposing of interfaces is performed automatically whenever an interface goes out of scope. It is intended to be a full implementation of the Firebird API, including events, services, blobs and arrays. It is distributed under the IDP Licence. The package may be downloaded from https://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/fb-pascal-api A comprehensive user manual fully describing the API is available from https://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/documentation

Hello! I'm pleased to announce that FirebirdNews site now uses a modern adaptive theme, meaning that it will display correctly in several screen sizes, including mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Enjoy! Carlos H. Cantu

IBSurgeon has released the complete trial kit for Firebird encryption, which includes fully functional time-limited AES256 encryption plugin and demo application (in Delphi) to demonstrate how to connect to the encrypted database. The trial kit is designed for the following: 1) Easy performance testing of the existing databases with the encryption: you can encrypt database on the server and test your existing applications without changing them. 2) Implement client-side security: there is a simple example of Delphi application (sources included) which demonstrates how to send the key from the client to the server. Download Firebird encryption plugin and example of a client application.

October 5, 2016, the registration to Firebird Conference 2016 will be closed! Hurry up, there is still a chance to visit Firebird Conference 2016, communicate with Firebird developers and leading Firebird experts.

The conference will be devoted to the performance optimization of Firebird, high availability, and security. Don't miss it!

Only 2 weeks left till the start of Firebird Conference 2016! This year the conference has the strong focus on Firebird in enterprises, and one of the key things for enterprises is high availability. The talks below will be devoted to high availability solutions based on Firebird and practical examples with 24/7 failover solutions.

Recovery and high availability solutions for Firebird, Alexey Kovyazin, IBSurgeon
The session will be devoted to high availability and failover solutions for Firebird: Firebird failover cluster, warm standby, distributed replication and backup to the cloud, etc. We will consider various scenarios of high availability and recovery: typical setups for enterprises, distributed web cluster, central backup server, etc.

HA cluster based on RedDatabase engine-level replication, by Dmitry Starodubov, RedSoft
Master-slave engine-level replication allows customers to build HA clusters as well as run read-only queries on a slave to reduce load on master.
This session talks about:
– Main features of engine-level replication
– How to configure it
– Synchronous and asynchronous replication
– Practical usage of HA cluster based on replication and pacemaker agent.